June, Summer, Rose
by xx.just.a.contradiction.xx
Summary: Oliver thinks about the three women who taught him invaluable lessons about love, known to him, respectively, as June, Summer and Rose. OWxKB threeshot. [inspired by the Umbrellas song of the same name.]
1. June

**I  
June**

'_I once knew a girl named June  
and one July she waved goodbye.  
I remember finding her  
curled up on an old box-spring.  
She said, "I'm gonna make mistakes.  
I just hope. I just hope you notice."'_

Her name had been Amber.

Fresh out of Hogwarts and living the life of a Puddlemere United rookie, Oliver had stumbled across her outside of a restaurant in Hogsmeade one night, her beautiful face wet with tears. Being someone who could never ignore a person in need, especially a girl, he'd stopped and offered her a handkerchief, which she'd taken with a wry smile.

It turned out her boyfriend, who had taken her out to dinner for their one-year anniversary, had, after they'd finished their meal, dumped her and left, telling her that he was in love with someone else. He'd even left her with the cheque, a cheque she couldn't afford to pay.

Outraged, Oliver had walked back into the restaurant and paid for the cheque himself, effectively breaking the bank for the month. Overwhelmed with gratitude, she'd cried herself to sleep on his shoulder in the Three Broomsticks and he'd been left with no option but to apparate home with the exhausted woman, laying her on his lounge to sleep off her pain.

That had been the start of their beautiful one-month relationship.

Amber, not only beautiful on the outside with her fair complexion and blonde ringlets; she was also an extremely nice girl… generous, intelligent and quick-witted; she could keep him interested without being overly wild or out-there. She was more than happy to get herself a job to help him pay the rent on his small flat, was an instant hit with his parents, and could drink any bloke on his quidditch under the table, something he was immensely impressed by, the only other girl he knew able to do that being Katie Bell, his best-friend and fellow chaser.

In fact, Amber had even impressed Katie; the toughest critic any girl interested in the handsome Scotsman had to get past. The two had become quite chummy in the month in a bit that Oliver and Amber had been together.

Only one thing had annoyed Oliver about Amber, and that was her continual complaints about the amount of time he spent on the quidditch pitch. A rookie player's schedule was actually fuller than a starting player's one; not only because of extra practices in which they were expected to hone their amateur skills, but also because they were given the many small publicity tasks, such as charity work.

Oliver hadn't thought she'd had a real problem with it though, had just thought it was a minor thing that she'd eventually get over. But alas, one night he'd come home to discover all her things missing, Amber herself nowhere to be seen, the only trace of her left being a note that she'd left for him to find on the kitchen bench.

It had been short and concise, and the words had burned themselves into his brain, her neat, flowing handwriting searing itself into his corneas forever.

_Dear Oliver,  
I love you, some part of me always will, but you have to realise that it would have taken more than your smiles, kisses and hugs to keep me. I needed your time as well Oliver… not all of it, but some of it would have been nice._

_I'll always remember that June night, it was the sweetest thing anyone has done for me. Thank you._

_Love,  
Amber._

And so Oliver had learnt vital love lesson number one:  
_time is of essence._

_

* * *

_

**_A/N: lyrics used in all three chapters are the three verses of "June, Summer, Rose" by Umbrellas. _**

-x-  
dedicated to  
Lady Catriona-Arre.  
-x-


	2. Summer

**II  
****Summer**

'_I once spoke to a girl named __Summer  
and one fall she stood so tall.  
She found some confidence and some wings and she, she flew away.  
And she said, "You can't hold me down any longer."  
what a beautiful song it was.'_

And then there had been Meghan.

Meghan, he'd met at one of his first quidditch game as a starting player. She'd been a friend of the team's healer Suzie, and had been invited by Roy, the Puddlemere seeker, to join them for the after-party to celebrate their victory.

Quiet, delicate and intensely gorgeous in a way Oliver had never seen before, dark-haired and chocolate-eyed Meghan Daily was fascinating. She drank in moderation, and spoke only when she felt so inclined, not just for the sake of talking. This, to some people, may have seemed snobby but Oliver knew better, being a man of few words himself.

Her soft seriousness had unnerved the rest of the team and so, within the first hour of their outing, Meghan and Oliver had been left at the table by themselves, the others off dancing and gallivanting about as per usual. Buying her a butterbeer and sitting in the seat next to her, Oliver had smiled and suddenly she'd begun to talk, her voice husky and musical all at the same time. Oliver, mesmerised by her, had asked her out again, and by the end of the fortnight they had seen each other every day, Meghan tagging along with Suzie to the practices and Oliver apparating to her flat each night.

On the last evening of that fortnight, Oliver had apparated into her apartment to hear the soft but confident sound of female singing drifting through the hallway. Following the beautiful sound, he'd found her in her bedroom, a fairly tiny room in which she'd somehow managed to fit a small piano, at which she was sitting, her eyes closed as her long, delicate fingers skated across the keys and her mellow voice rose into the air.

He stood there for a full ten minutes, lazily listening to the languid quality of her singing, before she'd realised he was there and with a snap of the piano lid the music disappeared, leaving an embarrassed silence in its wake. She'd been mortified: music had only ever been her secret passion, and she was too shy to even contemplate performing, though Oliver could tell it was something that would make her happy.

He had urged her to play for him again, and eventually she'd given in and sat back down to the squished-in piano; a smile, small at first but gradually growing, present on her face.

The next three months wrought a change in Meghan, and by fall she wasn't the timid, serious girl he'd first met in the summer, she was suddenly playing for his and her friends alike – her husky voice no longer enclosed in her small flat, echoing off the walls, but soaring out into the open like a bird taking flight.

Meghan had found her calling, and with it she had found her confidence.

Oliver was hard-pressed to decide whether he liked this new Meghan or not, it unnerved him that someone could change so much in a season. True, her music had matured in a way nothing short of extraordinary, but at the same time it didn't cut him anymore with its exquisite, almost unbearable honesty and personal charm anymore. And he just couldn't tell why.

And then, suddenly, one day, a week into the fall, as he stood at the front of a small crowd in Hogsmeade that had gathered where Meghan was busking, Oliver was shocked to hear her play a new song. A song he hadn't heard. A song, that, by the look in her eyes as she sang, he knew had been written for him.

He could feel his stomach twisting with bitterness for this wasn't a love-song; it was a break-up song. The lyrics were written with that same brutal honesty that her very first songs had had way back at the start of the summer when he'd first heard her sing, and they were raw and intensely beautiful... perhaps even more so than before, but oh god, how they hurt.

And so Oliver learnt vital love lesson number two:  
_change is not always good, and you will not always be needed._

* * *

hey all,  
thanks for your reviews - you're all so good to me! haha.  
and i'm sorry for confusing so many of you too, FFnet was being screwy last night and wouldn't let me post parts two and three.  
sigh.  
anyway, hope you enjoy them.  
Ash x


	3. Rose

**III  
****Rose**

'_I once loved a girl named Rose.  
And one sunny day she began to wither,  
so she took a dip in the pool, felt restored.  
she said, "I hate these thorns."  
so she cried, "one day I'll be beautiful and one day you'll love me."  
she said, "one day you'll love me,"  
but I, I already did.'_

And now… now there was Katie.

Sunny, vibrant, beautiful Katie Bell, his best-friend since before he could remember; the girl who had always been there for him… through Amber and through Meghan, and through all the other less meaningful flings he'd had.

Oliver being Oliver, had of course, not noticed the strange but all-consuming feelings he had for her, and had almost been too late in realising them. But he _had_ realised them, and that's what counted…

They had been spending time at her parents' property in the Scottish countryside, on a rare sunny day in spring, which they had spent most of, lazing beside the pool in a strange sort of awkward silence. Oliver had been confused, it wasn't like Katie to be so quiet and he was forcibly reminded of Meghan, and wondered if perhaps she was going to change on him, except in the opposite way. This scared him for many reasons, but the first and foremost, he realised, was that he loved her exactly the way she was – how could she be anything but Katie if she changed even in the slightest?

As he'd contemplated this, Katie, who had been lying silently in the luscious sunshine had gotten to her feet and walked inside, slamming the pool-gate behind her as she went. He watched her as she kicked off her flip-flops and began to sprint away from the house, running as fast as she could through the unmown grass of the vacant acres of lawn. Bewildered, he'd continued to stare at her until suddenly she buckled and fell, disappearing from his sight.

Frightened, Oliver had hurried out of the gate and run to where he'd last seen her, stopping short when he heard the unmistakeable sounds of her crying, a few metres away. Katie didn't cry, he'd only ever seen her shed a tear once, and that had been when her pet dog Prince had died.

Slowly he'd walked to her side, biting his lip nervously when he saw her lying sprawled in the grass, her bikini the only thing she was wearing as the wind picked up a bit around them. Getting down onto his knees, he'd gently reached out and stroked her cheek, pulling away a few loose strands of her wild chestnut hair.

Startled by him, she'd sat up, hurriedly wiping the tears from her eyes.  
'G-go away.'

Wincing, stung, Oliver marvelled at the wounded quality her voice had suddenly assumed, and as he finally _looked_ at her, he realised that there was something desperately wrong with her… her eyes had dark circles under them and she was thin, too thin.

'Katie, what's happened to you?' he'd asked her worriedly, reaching to once again tuck a few more wild waves from her tear-stained but still beautiful face.

She'd laughed hollowly, turning away from him and had refused to make eye contact with him as he continued to plead with her… beg her to tell him what was wrong.

'YOU!' she'd burst out suddenly, interrupting him mid-plead, facing him with a facial expression that scared him, 'You! You with your musicians and charity-cases! You've been so busy saving the world one scarred woman at a time you haven't even noticed the one woman who _actually_ loves you!'

She'd continued on, screaming at him as if she couldn't bear to hold it all in any longer, and as she had, he'd just remained kneeling there, blinking at her as all the pieces to the jigsaw suddenly came together and he'd realised that she was right, he _had_ been too busy with other women to notice that Katie, his constant companion, was in fact the one woman he was destined to be with.

'I don't know Oliver, maybe if I was beautiful, maybe if I was beautiful like your sweet, dark-chocolate little Meghan Daily or that blonde bombshell Amber! Maybe if I was like them you'd love me! Well, one day someone else _might_ actually think I'm beautiful and maybe _then_ you'll realise that it isn't about dark ringlets or pretty blue eyes, it's about loyalty, a-about _love_, Oliver, _love!_'

And she'd sat there, panting, staring incredulously at him as he smiled dreamily at him, beginning to cry with exasperation, until suddenly he'd started to laugh. And then just as suddenly, he'd stopped. And then he'd looked at her with a fascination he'd never realised existed.

'I've always loved you… al-always, and I didn't realise until just now… but I did. I always did.'

And it was then that Oliver learnt vital love lesson number three, the most important of them all:  
_That love is almost always already there.  
"You just have to see that it's wrapped in beauty and hidden away in between the seconds of your life.  
If you don't stop for a minute, you might miss it."_

* * *

**A/N: the last bit in quotation marks is a quote from Sean Biggerstaff's new movie "Cashback", no copyright infringement intended.**


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